The secret garden - 1993

It was nice… more suited for a young girl though. The book was nicer, of course.

The movie gives more space to the negative things than to the good ones. it’s 40 minutes or so before the children meet and start talking, 

A girl, Mary Lennox, lives in India with her parents who never have time for her. Her father only thinks of his career, her mother cares only of parties, or they spend time with each other, but never with her. She has servants who do anything for her. When her parents died, she’s sent to England to her uncle. His wife died, she was Mary’s mother’s twin sister, and the girl didn’t even know about it.

At first, she has a tremendous fit because the housekeeper Medlock doesn’t know what do to with her and tells her to stay in her room, and that nobody will wait on her like she’s used to, but then a kind girl, Martha, helps her dress.

Mary hears crying and yelling, but nobody tells her why, until she sneaks around at night and meets Colin, her cousin, that believes he is about to die, and so sick he can’t leave the room or even open the windows. Everyone wears surgical masks when in his room and carry him around when he has to be moved. 

Mary starts talking to him and eventually convinces him to let the sun in, but then she goes out and he has a huge fit, screaming and thrushing about… he believes like anyone else that he’s dying, until Mary touches his back and tells him he has no lump, and that he’s just weak because he’s always on that bed.

Half an hour before the end, finally the boy orders the staff that they must stay inside while he will go out with Mary and Dickon, Martha’s younger brother.

At first they push his wheel chair, then they help him making the first steps, and then he’s strong enough to walk and run… they don’t waste time for this, after his first tentative steps, we next see him up and running.

I would have liked more time dedicated to the children and the garden - I didn’t much care for the scene when Colin was jealous because Mary and Dickon got lost looking into each other’s eyes… I don’t know Dickon, but Mary and Colin are both ten years old.

I wanted a story of friendship and rebirth, not of tragedy and jealousy and drama. I mean, a bit was unavoidable, but then it should have centred on the rebirth.

Anyway, Medlock has enough of that, she’s always looked after the boy believing like everybody else that he had to be nursed; she never let him do anything, she kept him locked like that, and now she wants to lock him up again, and Mary too, in her room, away from him, but she knows of a secret passage (that Medlock doesn’t know about, although she’s been there much longer… then again, children are curious, while she’d be unlikely to go looking for passages…)

She goes out again with Colin, and they stay in the secret garden, the one Colin’s mother loved so his father had it kept closed after her death.

They try to call his father back with ‘magic’ - ie burning grass and chanting, and what do you know, he has a dream of his wife calling him to the garden, so he rushes home. Both children are not in their rooms, so Martha says they might be in the garden, and he goes there to see his son walking alone with a blindfold (he was playing with the others), and Mary runs away yelling “no one wants me!” for reasons unknown, since nobody said anything. She’s a child, okay, but a child would have watched what was happening, maybe approach the man herself. It didn’t seem right at that moment for her to run.

Anyway, the others find her and the man tells her she did a miracle and thanks her and they all hug and are happy.

The man, his son and Mary go back home walking, while everybody watches by the windows.

We are told the garden will never be closed again, and it’s the end.

Mary- Kate Maberly

Colin- Heydon Prowse

Dickon- Andrew Knott

Medlock- Maggie Smith

Martha- Laura Crossley

Lord Craven- John Lynch

Ben- Walter Sparrow